WORLD VIEWS: Intl' Court's ruling against wall infuriates Israelis; Francis 'end of history' Fukuyama backtracks in post-9/11 era; and French rethink what it means to be French.

Edward M. Gomez, special to SF Gate

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, July 15, 2004

For Palestinians, last week's ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague appeared to vindicate their bitter hatred of the wall Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon began erecting two years ago between his country and the occupied West Bank.

The 15-member panel of judges of the ICJ, the "principal judicial organ of the United Nations," ruled that Israel's building of the structure "in the occupied Palestinian territory, including in and around East Jerusalem, and its associated regime, are contrary to international law." The judicial body, also called the World Court, instructed Israel to stop constructing the wall on Palestinian territory and to dismantle what had already been built there.

The ICJ's ruling came on the heels of a June 30 decision by Israel's Supreme Court acknowledging the controversial wall's legitimacy but calling on Sharon's government to reroute it away from Palestinian territory. In reaction to the Hague court's ruling, an editorial in Ha'aretz, Israel's progressive daily, stated that the ICJ's "absolute rejection of Israel's [security-related] arguments [regarding the wall] is infuriating. ... In its fervor to present the Palestinians as innocent victims of the occupation, the court ignores the suicide attacks and other terrorist activities."

Ha'aretz also noted, "However, over the main issue there is agreement between Jerusalem and the Hague: Israel's security needs cannot ignore the rights of the Palestinians, and a fence that harms their right of movement, employment and education cannot be built. Israel is obligated and responsible also for the welfare of the residents of the territories, and not only the security of the Israelis."

The conservative Jerusalem Post offered an op-ed by Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz, written a day before and in anticipation of the international court's ruling. Its headline: "Israel follows its own law, not [the] bigoted Hague decision." Dershowitz wrote that the ICJ "discounted the saving of lives and focused only on the Palestinian interests. By showing its preference for Palestinian property rights over the lives of Jews, the International Court displayed its bigotry."

For now, the Palestinian leadership "remains undecided" about whether, based on the ICJ's ruling, to seek a U.N. Security Council resolution against Israel's wall. "The [U.N.] General Assembly has a virtually built-in majority in favor of the Palestinians but does not share the Security Council's powers to impose sanctions [on Israel]." (Independent)

Meanwhile, several days after the announcement of the ICJ's decision, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon were still celebrating the news. "Yes to the International Court of Justice ruling against the racist wall," one of their banners read as they marched through a refugee camp in southern Lebanon. Another banner declared, "Free people of the world: Demolish the new Berlin Wall." (Agence France Presse/Borneo Bulletin)

* * * *

Fifteen years ago, Francis Fukuyama, a soft-spoken U.S. State Department employee, put forth an odd-sounding notion: History, he said, had come to an end. Now, though, has history snuck up from behind and bitten back?

"Before the Berlin Wall had been breached or communism had folded like a house of cards, [Fukuyama] foresaw Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government, the end point in ideological and cultural evolution that would, sooner rather than later, conquer all opposing ideologies." (That's what Fukuyama meant by the forward-moving progress of "history," leading to its "end.") As the obscure American policy analyst's theory became known, conservative wonks embraced it as "a confident assertion of the age of global capitalism," (Sunday Herald) making Fukuyama a foreign-policy superstar and his book, "The End of History," an international hit.

Now, in a new book, "State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century," the "archpriest of global capitalism is rowing back from his earlier triumphalist vision," writes Jason Burke in a profile for The Observer. "'For individual societies and for the global community,' [Fukuyama] writes, 'the withering away of the state will be a disaster.' The gap opened by the decay of sovereign state power has been 'filled by multinational corporations, [nongovernmental organizations], international organizations, crime syndicates, terrorist groups and so forth.'" (Observer)

So much for global capitalism running loose at the expense of independent states. But why the apparent turnaround?

In a newspaper commentary, Fukuyama hinted that he was prompted to swap an exalted, end-of-history view of transnational capitalism's positive influence (which critics saw as merely a metaphor for U.S. power) by the "terrorist attacks on New York and Washington," which "put back on the table foreign policy and security, which are pre-eminently issues for nation-states." Thus, Fukuyama wrote that "[n]ation-states, with their legitimate monopolies of force," should and will have to fill the administrative and power vacuums that have emerged in the post-Cold War world.

"As a result, he added, "[s]tate building, as well as state deconstructing, is something we will have to think seriously about in the post-Reagan era [that is] now unfolding." But building strong states out of weak ones is something that requires outside help; that's exactly the kind of task Fukuyama's neocon peers and George W. Bush once emphatically rejected. (Observer)

Today, Fukuyama teaches at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University. If, as he claims, the era of the strong nation-state is or should be back, then who will -- or should -- lend a hand to weak states that need to be strengthened?

So, when it comes to nation building in the post-Cold War world, Gray wrote, "[t]o be sure, there is a way of replicating Western-style government throughout the world. It is called imperialism, and it supplies practically the only examples of successful state building cited by Fukuyama." But, Gray added, "if state building as Fukuyama understands it requires a rerun of European/British imperialism, it is a lost cause. ... The effect of the U.S. invasion of Iraq has been to create a failed state, and no one has the faintest idea what to do about it -- other than get the hell out as soon as they can." (New Statesman)

* * * *

What does it mean to be French today? In some ways, a lot like what it feels like to be American, if living in a multiethnic society, wrestling with ever more unpredictable economic forces and hearing young people speak a language that's almost indecipherable to their elders have anything to do with it.

Those are some of the conclusions an American reader might come away with after examining a series of essays about what it means to be French today that Le Figaro, France's generally conservative national daily, has been publishing for the past month. The series, which has featured writings by a variety of French thinkers, culminated in the publication of a two-part meditation by Jean d'Ormesson, a well-known literary figure and member of the Académie Française. (His best-known novel: "The Glory of the Empire," 1971.)

In earlier essays in the series, contributors such as political scientist Dominique Moïsi observed that, after 30 years of "explaining the world to the French and the French to the world," he had come to recognize that others regard his country with a "complex mixture of irritation, admiration and nostalgia." Overall, Moïsi believes the French are viewed by others, first and foremost, "as Europeans."

D'Ormesson sounded the trumpets for a more philosophical analysis of Frenchness. His tone was proud, candid and, often, bittersweet. "For a long time, to be French meant being loyal," he wrote, loyal to "a family, a piece of land, a landscape, a past, a man." "To be French was a duty, a pleasure, a glory," he recalled, but, over time, through revolution and the decline of an empire, "loyalty to a family and to a piece of land became loyalty to an idea and to values," those of a modern, democratic republic. With this shift in mind, he added, an older generation still understands the call for sacrifice President Kennedy issued in the United States almost half a century ago ("Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country").

It's in this collective sense of loyalty to the idea of what France can and should be, d'Ormesson suggested, that French identity is still rooted. But events and experiences of recent decades, he admitted, have shaken up France's sense of self. "Yesterday so powerful and rich, [today] France is in ruins," he lamented. "Her unity is threatened by special-interest communities. Reforms are needed, [but] they're almost impossible [to implement]. The French feel they have slid from first rank to second or third. ... To be French today, it's discouraging."

It doesn't help to have to admit, he added, that "Chinese children and Indian children are going to live better than their parents," while "our children will be less better off than us." For the first time ever, d'Ormesson noted, the French feel that "tomorrow will be worse than today."

At the risk of sounding too much like "a grumbler," the famous novelist waxed a bit Clintonesque -- or maybe Reaganesque -- in suggesting that what his countrymen really need now is a shot of hopefulness in the national outlook. "We've lost our gaiety. We've lost our grandeur. Not only have we lost our empire, but we're not even very proud of ever having had one," d'Ormesson wrote. What the French need now is hope, "but there is no hope [where] there is no sense of memory."

All of his concerns -- national pride, history, awareness of the past, a positive sense about the future -- come together, d'Ormesson suggested, in one of his greatest passions: language. Thus, he emphasized, only by learning about France's past and by learning its language well -- the two are closely intertwined -- will French children be able to be proud of their country.

The French language is "essential" to what it means to be French, and "everybody knows it," d'Ormesson wrote. "It is our power and our pride." How French will be "defended" in years to come and what its place will be in the "new" Europe are difficult problems, d'Ormesson believes, but when it comes to questions of national identity, the "most urgent task is to save our language from becoming shipwrecked." "Pardon me for the naÏf simplicity of the remark," he wrote, "but to be French today means to know how to speak, write and understand French." Then, as a coda, D'Ormesson added, "To be French today also means, without doubt, wanting to be French."

Violet Blue is author and editor of over a dozen sexual health books and erotica collections. She is a professional sex educator, lecturer, podcaster, video blogger, porn/erotica reviewer and machine artist.

Violet is also a fetish model, a member of Survival Research Labs, an author at Metroblogging San Francisco; girl friday contributor at Fleshbot, a San Francisco native, and a pro blogger.

For more information and links to Web sites discussed in Open Source Sex, go to Violet Blue's Web site, tinynibbles.com.

Latest from the SFGATE homepage:

Click below for the top news from around the Bay Area and beyond. Sign up for our newsletters to be the first to learn about breaking news and more. Go to 'Sign In' and 'Manage Profile' at the top of the page.